


The Story of Tonight (Reprise)

by JaneAire



Series: I May Not Live to See Our Glory, But I Will Gladly Join the Fight [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst, Blood, Cuddling, Depression, Disability, Disabled Character, Gladnis, Hurt and comfort, Kissing, M/M, Mentions of Sex, Mild Gore, Swearing, after altissia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-30 18:15:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12114417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaneAire/pseuds/JaneAire
Summary: The aftermath of Altissia ruins more than just a city's sense of security. It decimates relationships. It burns Ignis to the ground.Vignettes focusing on Ignis and his relationship with the boys after Altissia.





	The Story of Tonight (Reprise)

It had been too long. 

Yes, they had separated and yes, they had agreed to meet back at the hotel if they couldn't find one another after the fight. 

But the fight was over. Luna was dead and Noctis was asleep, barely bruised and bloodied lip. But Noctis was _here_ , which meant Ignis had no reason to be anywhere else. 

Almost twelve hours now, darkness shrouding the hotel room as Gladio's nails dug into the upholstery of the chair beside Noctis' bed, ripping the fabric out of its seams in frustration. Noctis wasn't waking up, and, a few hours ago, every breath had been a relief, a simple proof that he was alive; now every breath Noctis took was another reason that Ignis should be here, listening to them, another tick of the clock where Ignis was missing. 

Gladio should've never told him to fan out, to conquer quickly and get to Noctis quicker. It was stupid, it was something they'd taught him in one of his earlier classes at the Academy. He'd been stupid enough to make them easy targets--and, somewhere, Ignis was paying for it. 

He shouldn't have sent Prompto out into the darkness, either, not when his mind was up in this hotel room, thinking of the prince. Ignis wouldn't have sent Prompto out on his own, period, darkness and war torn city or no. 

But Gladiolus couldn't leave Noctis. He wouldn't make another rookie mistake tonight. 

His own skin was charred, scraped and bloodied from the fight. Had he even been thinking of Ignis in the battle? Surely he had been. Even now, in the stagnant hotel room where Noctis laid resting, if Gladio inhaled too sharply he could smell Ignis, as if he were here again, perched in Gladio's lap like it was a throne. He could taste him on the backs of his teeth. 

Yes, Gladio had been thinking of Ignis. _So why did I let him leave?_

Ignis had been worried about Noctis--it made him sloppy in the battle. Gladio knew that. 

Thinking about Ignis made Gladio sloppy in a fight. He knew that too. 

It had been a long line of mistakes, things Gladio should've fucking _seen_ because he wasn't a fucking moron. His dad would've killed him for this mistakes. Noctis could've died. 

Ignis could be dead. 

\----

His phone rang deep in the night, his eye lids barely fluttering due to his panicked heart--he can fucking hear Ignis laughing in the back of his mind _a constant state of sympathetic arousal isn't good for anyone, Gladiolus, no matter how pretty you think that blush is_ \--and he fumbled quickly to pull it from the confines of his leather pants. The knees were sticky with blood. He should've changed. 

"Prompto?" 

_"Gladio!"_

Gladio's heart dropped, something catching in his throat. It was a sob, and Prompto was making disgusting loud wails on his end of the line, breathing too quick as if he were running. 

"Where's Ignis, Prompto?" Gladio barked, risking from the chair so quickly it fell backward onto the floor. Noctis twitched in his sleep, rolling over with furrowed brows and fingers clawing into the duvet. His cheeks were wet. 

"Gl-Gladio. I-I-I--" 

He was hyperventilating, not sobbing. Maybe both, Gladio couldn't tell. Gladio couldn't care. 

"Where are you?" He demanded, stalking to the balcony of the hotel room, frustrated--he knew better than to open the door. No more mistakes.

_"Ignis--he's to heavy to carry, Gladio, I-I can't carry him I'm trying I swear, I swear--"_

The words _carry him_ are such a jolt that Gladio has to brace himself against the wall with his forearm, eyes wide. It's there again, the taste of Ignis across the backs of his teeth, and he can almost feel the smooth of him against his neck. Gladio's cheeks were wet. 

"Where are you?" He demanded again, voice breaking. What the fuck did carry him mean? Was he unconscious? 

Was he dead? 

_"I could drag him to an alley, but that's all I can do--Gladio,"_ Prompto sobbed, his voice breaking, unable to breath properly. Gladio was right there with him. _"Gladio, there's so much blood."_

Ignis was dead. Gladio let's himself have one keening sob before he collapses again the wall, pressing his face against the cold wallpaper, letting his eyes slip closed as he gasps. He could see Ignis, suddenly, flashing behind his eyelids along with a kaleidescape color burst that he assumed was coming from the fact he'd lose consciousness any minute. 

It doesn't make sense, he reasoned, how can his lips still be bruised and tender from the kisses of someone whose no longer breathing. Shouldn't Gladio have felt it, when Ignis turned into nothingness, when Ignis' world went dark? He could see Ignis, unsure but determined, pale and pock marked and tender as he held Gladio's face between his strong, scarred hands. Surely the taste that was left in the bloodied cracks of his lips means that Ignis was still here. 

Ignis couldn't be gone. 

"Have you--" Gladio began, ashamed to find his voice was high and wet. "Have you checked? Made sure?" 

Prompto couldn't leave him out there, he just couldn't. Fuck the niffs roaming the streets and fuck the dark and fuck Prompto--Ignis had to be here. He deserved that. 

Prompto's breath caught on the other end of the line. _"Glad--He's alive,"_

Biting back on the sobs so that Prompto couldn't hear him, Gladio slid to his knees in relief, shocked to find his chest hollow with the pain of it. Ignis was alive. Alive, but not safe. Not dead, but dying. 

Ignis loved him and he was dying. And Gladio was here. 

"Prompto," Gladio choked. "Stay with him. Keep hidden until he wakes up. Have you used your potions on him?" 

_"Yeah. It's not enough, though. It healed up most of the wounds on his neck and it mended the broken bones, but, uh--"_

"What bones?" Gladio asked.

_"Uh, his cheek, I think? But higher? I think it's called like, the orbital. I was shit in anatomy--"_

"Prompto," Gladio snarled, impatient. "What isn't healing?" 

There was a pause. _"It's--it's his face, Gladio. The bleeding won't stop. Um, it's--his face is sunk in. I think his eye's--I think it's gone."_

Gladio's stomach flipped. His mind flashed back to a horrible movie Noct had once picked out for the three of them, long before Prompto was in the picture. He'd passed out, and it had just been Gladio and Ignis watching this shitty film where some dude shoved his thumb into this terrorist's eye socket--his eye had just _popped_. Ignis had immediately turned off the set, nearly gagging, and Gladio had made fun of him for his weak stomach. 

Was that what had happened? If his whole face was bleeding--surely it wasn't his brain? 

It could've been.

"Tear off a piece of your shirt that isn't fucking disgusting, he doesn't need an infection, and use it to clot the blood. Be gentle, don't press too hard and fuck up his eye. Try and wake him up." 

_"What? Gladio, he can't--"_

"Yes, he fucking can. He has to. Get him awake enough to walk back to the hotel. Get him here, Prompto. Figure it out." 

\----

Ignis collapsed the second Prompto hauled him into the hotel room. He'd been right--his eye was fucked. It looked as if someone had thrown him down the street face first, for all the bloodied stripes across his face and chest had to show for it. 

"What do we do?" Prompto asked, the front of his shirt covered in blood. His eyes were dark with bruising--it was clear he hadn't touched a potion since everything had gone down. He wasn't sure whose blood it even was on his shirt--Luna's, Noct's, Iggy's, or his own. Prompto had nearly lost everything today, but he was standing before Gladio so rigid and empty handed, so stone faced and solemn, Gladio half wondered if he hadn't already broken. 

"You go watch Noctis," he barked with more venom than necessary as he laid Ignis out more carefully across the other bed, throwing open their medicine bag. "And I mean fucking watch him. Don't sleep, and don't go piss--watch him. I'm gonna bandage up Iggy." 

"On it," Prompto grunted, sparing a soft look toward Ignis as he fled. He didn't say a word about how Gladio's eyes were rimmed red, or that his hands were trembling too violently to properly put Ignis back together, just does as he was told with a stiff robotic gait and a soldier's loyalty. 

His clothes were ruined, tattered strips of fabric that have done little to protect their owner. They're black and red, flecked with dirt and crusted blood, and everything plastered to his skin from the rain. It seemed like a million years ago now, the four of them hustled around Ignis at Noctis' kitchen table, jokingly fashioning designs for their fatigues, earning gruff and sensible comments from Ignis as they prodded his pencil to work faster. 

God, Gladio couldn't let him die before Ignis knew how important he was to him. To the three of them. _You've never been contingent, you're Necessary. You've always been Necessary, you'll always be Necessary._

Gladio's hands were stumbling, fumbling in a sloppy attempt to cut the clothes from his body without dragging open the wounds further--Prompto had been right, the potions hadn't done much to stop the bleeding--but the wetness of the fabric had plastered itself to the clotted blood, and dragging it off reopened wounds. Beneath him, seemingly in his sleep, Ignis arched off the bed with a barely restrained hiss, a sharp grunt, biting back on his tongue. 

Ignis was _awake_. 

"Iggy," Gladio breathed, slumping over Ignis from where he'd arched, careful not to touch as he sliced his shirt open, buttons flying. The stench of blood was making him nauseous--it had never done that before. "Sweetheart, are you awake?" 

His face was so swollen and mottled, both eyes welled shut with bloated skin and a milky, jaundiced fluid he'd been familiar with himself when Ignis had burned a vicious spot on his back bicep while training with the fire magick. The potion had healed that, though. There were no signs of life from him, other than a sharp wail, muted as if it were buried deep in his throat, rising from his gut. His heels were dug deeply into the mattress, his hips cresting upward again as Gladio pressed a salve against an open wound on his neck. 

Was this right? Gladiolus had taken medic classes--he'd had to, for school--but he had no idea what he was doing. The healing had almost always been delegated to Ignis and Noctis, and both of them were out of commission. Would these combinations of amber ointments and peach creams slathered across these missing pieces of Ignis fix him, or make it worse? And they were missing pieces, entire chunks suddenly gone. A spot on his neck where Gladio had spent most of the previous night with his face buried in it, smooth and warm against his lips, was now missing. Gone. 

Was Gladio increasing the pain, deftly wrapping bandages across his chest, blinding him to the injuries--if they were covered, if they stopped thinking about them, would they heal? Did something like these ever really heal? Gladio remembered that falling in a forest riddle Noctis used to rattle off as a child, as if it truthfully perplexed him. 

Ignis was beginning to look like the mummies from Noctis' story books. 

Should Gladio give him something for the pain? Something hard? Or was too much blood gone, too quick? 

Did it matter how many bandaids Gladio put over him if this was how Ignis died? 

What could Gladio say that would prove his life was even worth while? 

He didn't look at his face. He looked nothing like Ignis. He looked inhuman. 

The same bed, hours before, Six---

Gladio threw up in the wastebasket, and wrapped the bandages across Ignis' eyes, ignoring the fact half his face, beneath the swelling, was sunk. The bones hadn't set properly with the potion. Fuck. 

He sat on the corner of the bed, watching Ignis, wet and vulnerable, all pink and cream between the blood and his bare skin. 

Gladio should grab a washcloth, clean the skin, find the real sources of the blood. That's what they'd taught him in school. 

He sat on the corner of the bed, watching Ignis, trying to come up with something to say as his hands twitched. His gloves were shredded, knuckles bloody and cracked. 

What do you say to someone you're losing? Someone you loved? 

Gladio was glad Ignis couldn't see him right now, as he took shuddering breaths through swollen lips. 

Ignis could pretend that he was Noctis. It's what he would want. 

What to say? 

Gladio's fingers curled into the duvet cover, ripping it beneath his thick palms. 

What to say? 

Gladio's voice was wet, ugly, breaking. Amicitia's didn't fucking cry. Amicitia's didn't fall apart at the bedsides of King's advisors. Amicitia's didn't pin their lives on anyone besides the lives of their King. 

What to say? 

Gladio's heart shattered inside his chest, splintering his lungs until all the air was gone and his throat was thick with blood. He'd bitten through his lip. He sobbed. 

" _Ignis_ ," he whispered, taking his limp hand between his own. Too big, Gladio was much too big. Ignis had never been this small. "Please. Please, stay. Please." 

\----

Gladiolus never slept, not until the bleeding had stopped--he'd changed the bandages four times in six hours--and not until Ignis had stopped gasping like a fish on Noctis' hook--there was probably an important metaphor there, but Gladio was too tired to find it and be bitter about it. 

A steady stream of potions, enough to make him sick, had brought down the swelling by the time the dawn had arrived. The rain had stopped outside the window, but it was still overcast. 

At dawn, Gladio pulled the drapes shut, and sent Prompto out a second time to scour for a doctor. He left Noctis alone this time. 

He decided he didn't care. 

This whole thing was Gladio's fault, anyhow. 

Ignis was beginning to look more like Ignis--the swelling in his face had gone down immensely, but more than half of it was a pink and yellow patch of open slime, still trying it's best to heal. The open sores on his chest had now scabbed over thanks to the medicine, they'd heal nicely. It would all scar. Gladio tried not to imagine Ignis' disgusted face when he'll look at his reflection again. He failed. 

It hurt. 

It was Gladio's fault. 

Ignis slept through the doctor's visit. Gladio doesn't think he can cry anymore. The doctor offered him a list of things that might go right, but have a higher probability of going wrong. Gladio was wrong about the crying thing. 

Prompto gave up on staying awake, instead guiltily curls around Noctis, one arm slung over his waist--just to feel if he moves. Prompto hasn't cried. He can't really afford to take out his contacts--he isn't even sure where his glasses are. 

For the first time in a long time, there is silence. It's a sorrow Gladio can't name, isn't familiar with. Ignis would call it melancholy. Tragically beautiful. Gladio would argue tragedy isn't beautiful. 

Gladio rests a palm on Ignis' stomach, pressing his face against his side, devoid of wounds. Besides the scrapes on his knee, now  healed, Ignis' lower body escaped the damage. 

Gladio understood now, what irony really was. He wasn't laughing. 

Hours before, they'd been in this same bed. Gladio had held him just like this, his face just as wet. It amazed him--the cosmic irony of it all. He understood he deserved it. 

He just didn't understand why Ignis had to pay. 

\----

It's the darkness that was the scariest. 

Because the room wasn't  _cold_. Ignis wasn't foolish--dark rooms were cold, perhaps wet. He remembered being wet. He wasn't anymore. The room was warm, too warm, and Ignis wasn't wearing any clothes. 

_Ardyn_. 

Breathe, he reminded himself to breathe. Assess. So the room wasn't cold, he realized, brain firing on all cylinders so rapidly his head swam, aching with a physical tiredness he hadn't spoken to before. 

Cold. The room wasn't cold, he was warm, he was hot. 

Dark, dark but not cold. 

Blindfold. 

Logical, he argued, reaching up lead-heavy arms to claw the fabric away from his face. 

He screamed. 

The pain was searing, lacing, jolting behind his ears in the middle of brain, a sort of pain he'd never spoken to before. Hands, there are hands on his hips, a voice calling his name too loudly. 

His bare foot found purchase with skin--warm, sturdy, too big for him to take on--and launches his hips upward to propel the body backward with a thump. Legs were strong, he remembered, he needed to run--Ardyn--

"Ignis!" 

Ignis froze, the flowering pain ceased to blossom behind his eyes for a moment, relaxing into what felt like a bed beneath him. "Gl-Gladio?" He asked, his voice surprisingly hoarse. Painfully hoarse. He needed water. 

"Sweetheart," Gladio called again, his voice softer this time. The darkness was disorienting. It could be a trick on Ardyn's part, Ignis realized, head swimming again. He'd fall for it, of course. 

Hands on his hips were suddenly there, warm and gentle, pressing them back into the mattress, voice hushing him lightly. "Are you--" a long pause, before. "How are you feeling?" 

Ignis' head couldn't decide what hurt worse, slowing down the cylinders to realize everything was sore. Painfully so, more than an ache and miles worse than any sharp sting or burn he'd ever felt. It felt as if someone had drilled into skull through his eye sockets, a thousand times worse than the time Noctis accidentally thumped him midfight-- 

Noctis. 

_Noctis_. 

"Noctis!" He yelped, voice breaking, desperately trying to sit up. "Where's Noctis--Gladio, is he?"

Ardyn had said--he'd said--Ardyn--

Ardyn. Leaving Gladio. Finding Ardyn. Ardyn. 

Ignis broke. 

"Noctis," he whined again, softer, surprised to find Gladio's fingers intertwining with his own--he'd been reaching like a child after a nightmare, struggling to sit up. Gladio eased him back against the mattress. 

"He's fine. He's alive. He's resting," Gladio said in his usual baritone. "Which is more than I can say for you." 

Ignis sniffed. "Has he--has he been seen by a doctor?" _Has he been asking for me?_

"Yes," Gladio sighed, and Ignis felt him brush his hand against his hair lightly. "Ignis--" 

"Prompto? Luna?" A sharp swallow. "Are you? Are you alright, Gladiolus?" 

He let his hands wander, despite the fact it felt they were filled with lead, trailing up what felt to be Gladio's arms and chest. Why was he blindfolded-- 

Ardyn. Not blindfolded. Bandaged. 

Ah. 

When his hands reached Gladio's jaw, he was surprised to find trembling, wet lips. Hands seized his fingers--he hissed, they felt bruised, too full--and pressed them harshly against Gladio's mouth. "I'm fine," he whispered. "Prom's fine." 

Ignis didn't miss a beat. "Lady Lunafreya?"

Gladio didn't hesitate. "She didn't make it."

Ignis swallowed. "I see. Noct is...?" 

"Asleep. You should be too." 

Ignis swallowed thickly, feeling the memories flooding back slowly, blurry and filtered, grainy and waterstained. He remembered it precisely, every bit of it. He could hear the Chancellor's sharp cackle in the back of his head. 

"Iggy," Gladio whispered, begging and reverent. "Please rest. You won't heal unless you rest." 

There's a brief moment where Ignis can't taste the bitter tang of it on his tongue, all the words he wants to say, the story he wants to tell and the _I love you_ he's half wishing he could take back, half restraining himself from spitting a half dozen more. Gladio should know, Ignis should tell him. 

He remembered how Gladio has always kept his secrets from Ignis, kept his thoughts on lock down to ease some sort of burden he thinks he's bearing for them. 

Ignis sealed his tongue to the roof of his mouth. 

Gladio doesn't say he's sorry. 

Ignis is catatonic, stone faced and unfeeling as Gladio pressed his face into the crook of Ignis' neck--Ignis ignored how it came away wet. He let himself curl stiffly around Gladio, feeling the warmth in the disorienting darkness--a reminder that this was real, despite the dysphoria. 

_Be here with him, for once,_ a voice in his head that doesn't sound like his own chided him. Ignis tried to listen. It was difficult when he felt as though he were a million miles away from his body. He needed to see Noctis. _Enjoy this. He loves you. Take this piece of normalcy for what it's worth._

There was no more pretending for Ignis. No more indulgent daydreams of seaside cottages with the boys smiling, happy, safe. No more dreaming. 

Not when Ardyn would continue to shatter them in his face.

Ignis couldn't be selfish. Not for one second. Not anymore. 

\----

Three days pass before Noctis woke. 

There wasn't much that happened. 

Ignis was able to get up, walk around a few steps with guided help from Gladiolus. Until the wounds heal, the doctor said, his eyes have to stay covered and the room must stay dark. Gladio was starting to feel the effects of it, the melancholy starving him for light. The days were getting shorter, and they may have to spend weeks like this. 

The potions stopped working, eventually. Three days, and the wounds have closed, leaving angry red lines across the surface of his skin. It was too soft, still tender, but Gladio knew they'd stay that way. He isn't sure how to tell Ignis--it isn't a lie when Ignis asked how it looked for Gladio to respond with "better". It will be a lie soon, however. He wasn't ready for that. 

Ignis knew when he lied.

He'd told Ignis after he'd eaten for the first time. Showered, with Gladio's help, shaved and changed the bandages. Ignis' ears kept pink, embarrassed in a shameful way. He should've been able to hold his own. 

Gladio promised himself he'd do this everyday, if that's what it took to make up for what he'd done. 

Gladio was brushing his wet hair back, looking anywhere but Ignis' face. His cheekbones had finally healed properly with the potions, restoring the elegant angles of his face, but the scars still make Gladio sick with guilt. 

"How...how bad is it?" 

It had been the first time he'd asked, and Gladio paused, setting the hair brush aside--he'd have to have Prompto style it, if Ignis wanted that. Gladio barely brushed his own hair. 

"Still healing, Iggy." 

"Gladio," Ignis breathed, his eyes closed. The room was dark, and the two of them were sitting close on the edge of the tub so that Gladio could see what he was doing--the last thing he needed was to use the brush to take out Ignis' other eye. "I meant my injuries. My eyes." 

Gladio had explained to him about the temporary darkness situation--the doctor had guessed it would probably be the case, and wasn't alarmed when Ignis brought up the fact he couldn't see anything. 

He hadn't explained whole _gee, Iggy, your eye kinda exploded? Not sure, you won't say a word about what happened, so I won't push, but, yeah. Sorry about that. Hope you weren't too attached to your depth perception._

"I can...I know what happened--I'm not foolish. Something isn't right. It's still so swollen but," he stopped, abruptly, uncharacteristic of him. Gladio's knuckle was lightly perched against Ignis's bottom lip, still cracked sharply from where it had busted. "You'll have to tell me at some point, Gladio. I deserve to know everything. I will find a way to call the doctor if you're with holding information." 

Gladio had done enough bandaid ripping this week to last a lifetime. "You've lost your eye." 

Ignis' face remained neutral. Stone, eyes closed consciously. "I," he paused, an odd look coming over his face. "I see." 

It was a joke. A fucking joke. 

Ignis was fucking smiling wryly, reaching out blindly to nudge Gladio's arm, hitting him deftly between the ribs instead. "Understand, Gladiolus? I see--" 

"I got it," Gladio spat, shaking. This wasn't right. This wasn't how this was supposed to happen. This wasn't a fucking joke. 

This was Gladio's fault. 

"Gladiolus," Ignis whispered, surprisingly tender, surpringly calm. "I do have another eye.  With the addition of ten fingers and ten toes, I do believe I make up a full person as well. It's going to be alright." 

Gladio was gripping the edge of the bathtub as if the floor might open and swallow him whole. It wasn't fair for this to happen to fucking Ignis. It wasn't fair that Ignis felt like he should be consoling him, as if Gladio had given anything in this fucking fight. 

It was Gladio's  _job_ to deal with shit like that. Not Ignis. Never Ignis. 

"The fact that I'm alive--isn't that enough for you?" 

\----

Prompto helped Ignis when Gladio needed sleep. Ignis had been needing a lot less of it, suddenly. Pulling books from the library now that the city in full swing of reconstruction kept him busy, reading to Ignis kept him busy. It stopped him from gravitating to Noctis, where he's not needed. 

Ignis convinced Prompto to let him sit at Noctis' bedside just to listen to him breathe. It's as if they'd placed a wilting flower into a vase of crystalline water--Ignis flourished again, autonomy restored and ambition at his heels. 

He'd heal for Noctis. He had to. 

Gladio was so thankful for the change, he smothered the spark of bitterness in his chest, reminding himself it's all his fault. The bitterness spilled out of his mouth and he retches the guilt out anyway, metallic like blood, gritty like shame. 

It was embarrassing how fast the jealousy came. 

\----

Ignis walked into the room that night on his own, not calling for Prompto to help him guide, and Gladio throws his book to the side without marking his place in an attempt to get to Ignis faster. He'd been stumbling, bumping with frequence, despite his ambition for quick and painless autonomy. 

Gladio's hand was on his lower back when Ignis pulls away so fast he slams deftly into the wall. 

"You have to let me practice, Gladiolus," he grunted softly, sounding so much like the sixteen year old he'd sparred with back at the citadel. Two things that no longer exist. "I refuse to slow this retinue down. Noctis could be waking any day now--I have to be able to walk." 

"Ignis," Gladio called in warning as Ignis' knees slammed into the bed frame, earning a wince. 

"I'll manage," Ignis grunted in a strained, soft voice. "I'll have to." 

He'd stopped wearing bandages over his eyes, he'd graduated to some shaded glasses the doctor had brought over. Gladio hadn't been in the room, so he was unsure as to what was said, but Ignis had exited somber but determined as ever.

He was smaller. 

He worked his shirt off his shoulders, careful not to trip out of his pants, leaning against the bed for support. Gladio grabbed for his pajamas, and sat them down on Ignis' bare knee. 

Gladio didn't say anything, just let Ignis' realize his shirt was on backwards before they crawled under the covers. This, Ignis was good with. 

His hands were immediately seeking, rolling between Gladio's legs and pressing his face into Gladio's chest. 

The good thing about the darkness, Ignis decided, wasn't that you could pretend the person you were holding was someone else. It was that you could pretend you were somewhere else. You could pretend you weren't yourself. 

You could pretend you were sixteen with perfect vision, happy, sitting in a day with a normal span of daylight and a soft, pale boy, whose very existence depended on you. 

Being wanted. Ignis' self worth was contingent on being wanted.

He buried himself closer to Gladio, hissing slightly at the sharp pressure around his good eye--he didn't care. Not when Gladio was carding his hand lightly through his hair, using his other to smooth across the back of Ignis' tee, pressing kisses to the unharmed side of his temple. 

"I love you," Gladio murmured into the dark, his tone loaded with a meaning Ignis couldn't quite comprehend. 

"How bad is it?" Ignis asked again, propping his chin on Gladio's clavicle. He was careful to keep his eyes closed, but he can feel Gladio's warm breath ghosting against his lips, one hand still cupping the back of his head. Gladio hasn't kissed Ignis on the mouth once since returning--odd, since before the battle, he'd barely been able to pry his hands off of him. 

Ignis had decided it must be awful. He could hear it in the way the doctor suggested he keep the scarring wet, hoping it'll pretend the ugly redness from spreading across his face. He could hear it in Prompto's uncertainty when he asked the same question. 

And now Gladio wouldn't touch him if his life depended on it. It was disappointing to say the least. 

Ignis was beginning to wonder if he was just a middle man in a long string of trysts, an end of the world affair he wanted no part in. But then Gladio was there, cupping his cheeks softly, leaning forward. 

"Ignis," he said. Nothing more. 

Ignis pulled away. 

"Don't bullshit me. Tell me how it looks, Gladio." 

Gladio sighed. "It looks like a scar." 

"Nobody likes a smart ass, Gladiolus. Tell me how it looks." 

"What the fuck do you want me to say?" Gladio growled. "Ignis, sweetheart--you have to know I'm always going to think you're beautiful--" 

"No," Ignis hissed, rolling onto his back away from Gladio, covering his eyes with a thrown arm, his hand dangling from his wrist artistically. Melancholy. "You won't. Just--" Ignis swore, scrubbing at his face too harshly, feeling the sharp sting of the bruise. It wasn't fair, none of it was fair. 

That had been Ardyn's plan, he knew. Fire at a weakness--Ignis' looks. Take the confidence. Take the security. Take the ability to observe, advise. 

Make him useless. Make him unwanted. 

Ignis was worthless if he was unneeded. 

"I can't see it, Gladiolus, just--I'm not even sure how wide it is--" 

There was a finger, rough, doing it's best to trace softly, at his temple, suddenly rolling down a line of Ignis' face, slowly. 

It stretched from his temple to the dip of his neck, soft and pink in some places, angry and red in others. When Gladio pressed a kiss to the hollow of Ignis' jaw, he was shaking with just how  _long_ it’s taking Gladio to trace the scar. 

It was his whole damn face. 

Was Gladio disgusted? Would Noctis be? 

When his sight returned, would it matter if his reflection was only painful? 

Ignis let himself cry for the first time since the incident. Gladio held him. 

There's a silence they sink into, despite the darkness. 

"The fact that you're alive is more than enough."

\----

The healing they were waiting on never comes. 

Ignis felt the splintering, cracking his ribs in his sleep, sandwiched between Noctis and Gladiolus, even when he can't see it. He couldn't sleep. He wanted to. It never comes for him anymore. 

Gladio shook with rage, the seething making it impossible for Ignis to press his mouth back with equal fevor when Gladio finds a moment to sneak a moment. His silence made it impossible for Ignis to decipher him anymore. 

Gladio stopped speaking to them as a group. He stopped touching Ignis, period. 

Ignis could do little for Noctis the way he was now--impossible to reach out when he was unsure of the Prince's physical whereabouts most of the time. 

There's little Ignis could do, period. 

He was hollow. Unneeded. Contingent. 

Ignis had to give it up to him--the chancellor knew what he was doing. 

They stopped at a shitty motel--it's all they could afford right now, since hunts were out of the question for both Ignis and Noctis. Ignis splurged for two rooms anyway. He couldn't handle the bickering, not tonight. Not when he hadn't slept for two days now--he's on the verge of tears, he's so desperate for sleep. 

Gladio doesn't let him rest. 

"He's being a fucking brat," he hissed, slamming the door behind them. He didn't touch Ignis, didn't ask how he felt, just shrugged out of his jacket and stared at the door as if Noctis might run in for a fight any second. Ignis wandered till he found the bed. 

Gladio has begun to speak as if he believed Ignis were now hard of hearing--every word was slow, enunciated, punctuated with a space after it. He spoke obscenely loud, and whether that was for Ignis' benefit or Noctis' on the otherside of the paper thin wall, Ignis couldn't do much more. 

Much more of anything. Much more, period. 

The tears felt like a heavy sting behind his eyes, too painful to hold back, but he does it anyway. 

"Gladiolus," he warned, running a hand through his hair, pleased to be sitting, wishing he were sleeping. "This illness has taken my eyesight, not muddled my brain. Please stop speaking to me as if I were a moron. I've lost the temporary ability to see. I assure you my hearing is just fine." 

"You don't seem to be listening," Gladio grumbled in his usual tone. Ignis admitted it was a bit more difficult to distinguish what Gladio said said without the use of lip reading--Gladio was horrid about mumbling. "He's been ignoring you--" 

"And you haven't been?" Ignis snapped before he could stop himself. He blamed it on the sleepless nights and the nightmares--but he found that he meant it. The rage was there, chained up in his chest, hiding in the darkness. What else was hiding there? 

"Ignis--" 

"He's your king," Ignis snarled, staring--he'd gained the ability to open his good eye a few weeks ago, not that he liked to do it. Prompto had let it slip that it was a little more than unnerving. "He's in mourning. Let him deal with this. We're all healing--" 

"He needs to fucking suck it up! Regis would've." 

"Noctis is a boy--" 

"He's either a boy or a king, Ignis, but he can't be both." 

Gladio was full of venom, weeks and weeks worth of it, wallowing in the unjust mess they'd been poured into. It was more than he could bear. 

"They don't negate each other, Gladio," Ignis said slowly, shaking with the effort of it. Gladio knew he was too tired. He should put him to bed.

God, the guilt had eaten him from the inside out. Rotten. Hollow. 

"He's both--" 

"He is nothing to me," Gladio yelped, loud enough that the sudden silence on the otherside of the paper thin wall was deafening to Ignis. The shuffling of movement had stopped. They were listening. "He's proven that he's an unworthy king--" 

"The gods disagree." 

"Fuck the gods!" Gladio swore, and Ignis flinched at the sound of something shattering. 

_Ardyn. Ardyn and the fire and the rain and the glass._

"My mistake," Ignis sighed. "I didn't realize I was in the presence of the prime mover. Tell me, Necessary being, more about how young Noctis fails to meet your criteria? I doubt you'd meet it yourself." 

"I'm not a king."

"Why do you stay, if not for him?" Ignis stood too quickly, losing his balance and sliding against the wall with a sharp yelp. Gladio let him fall with pained eyes. He remembered when they'd begun to stop checking on Iris every time she'd cried, part of the autonomy learning. He'd sat outside the nursery door listening to her wail. "If you have so little faith in him, why not leave?" 

_As if I could leave you_. 

"Why do you need to know?" 

"My feelings for you are contingent upon it." 

The words tasted like poison in his mouth, the noise Gladio makes in the darkness is enough to shatter his heart across his chest. Looking inside himself, he knew it to be true. If Gladio had no interest in serving Noctis, Ignis had no interesting in Gladio. 

"Oh," Gladio sighed softly. "Oh." 

He couldn't see his face in the darkness. He couldn't read him. Ignis missed it, decoding a person so he could spin them on their head. Their relationship would be so different at this moment if Ignis could simply figure out how to recode and diffuse. But he couldn't. 

Ardyn did a fantastic job of ensuring his uselessness. 

"Say something," Ignis demanded. 

Gladio sucked in a sharp breath, stealing from the darkness around them. "This--Ignis, this is more than I can bare." 

Ignis laughed then, ruefully, the bitterness slipping down his throat into his stomach, consuming him whole. "I've lost my sight and _you_ can't handle it?" 

Gladio, wet faced and shaking, half wishing Ignis could see him like this and understand. 

But he couldn't. So he sealed his lips shut and waits for a command. 

"You're hurting Noctis," Ignis said dryly. "Which hurts our mission. Either you're on this team or you aren't." 

Gladio swallowed then, understanding. "I won't stand behind him any longer. Not while he hurts you." 

"He's  _hurting_ ," Ignis sneered. "He's lost his father, his oracle. I've lost my sight. What have you sacrificed, Gladiolus? What have you lost?" A pause. "Besides me." 

It was a silence that was suffocating, unsure. Unsafe. Everything Ignis never wanted. Gladio's last hopes shattered around his feet, splintered in his chest. It was over. All of it. 

His consolation was that one day the darkness would swallow him, too. Ignis wouldn't be alone for long. 

"You should be going. Our party is for those serving the king." 

He heard Gladio stand, slowly, robotically, his boots scraping across the carpet floor. 

"We meet at the train station tomorrow morning. I suggest on thinking before you make a decision." 

"Alright." 

\----

Prompto wouldn't shut up about it. 

Noctis was sitting with them, for once, across from Ignis, their knees bumping, instead of several chairs away. 

Prompto was leaning on Ignis side, his hands wrapped around Ignis' bicep. "Where's the big guy? He's not usually this late." 

Ignis stayed silent. He hadn't slept again last night. It was beginning to get to the point he wished he'd lost a limb. It'd be easier. 

"Prom's right, we can't leave with out him Specs. He's too stupid to catch up with us if he gets lost," Noctis sighed, deadpan despite the joke. Maybe it hadn't been a joke. Ignis had lost the ability to tell. 

He heard the boots scuff before the boys did, Noctis giving a loud sigh no doubt when his unruly crop of hair appeared over a seat. 

He sat with them, his too long legs kicking Ignis as he lowered himself into a chair beside Noctis. 

Ignis could feel the eyes on him, Gladio staring too intently, the boys glancing between the two of them, picking up on something not even Ignis could grasp. 

"Glad you could join us," Ignis said. 

He heard the squeak of leather, most likely a shrug. "Decided I've got too much skin in the game." 

Ignis bit down on a smile--it was unwanted, involuntary, but creeping like ivy across his lips nonetheless. Gladio kicked his foot lightly, an acknowledgement, but Ignis couldn't see his eyes to get the message. 

He was here. 

It was more than enough.


End file.
